Anyhoo... shortly after I graduated from college, Brad and T-Bagg and I attended a friend's backyard keg party. It was in the town of our state's party school, which also had the state's highest reported rates of STDs (a.k.a., Brad's alma mater, natch). We were only attending the party as a favor to a friend, who begged us to accompany her. We were bored, didn't know anybody there, and therefore didn't care how drunk we got or if we made asses of ourselves. What was weird about this particular party, and what was annoying both Brad and me, was the number of people using words like "awareness" at a keg party in the state's STD capital. So, we decided to start messing with posers. Without any pre-planning, forethought, or prior consultation, Wonder Twin powers were activated, in the form of indignant hipster activists. And once we got in the zone, there was no stopping this tag-team.
We started telling other guests about our campaign to raise awareness about awareness. As we bemoaned the lack awareness of awareness, people were eager to get on board, even though they weren't quite sure what we were doing. They wanted to know more. We condescendingly hinted that their inability to grasp what we were doing was a symptom of the problem. People needed to become more aware of being aware... it's as simple as that. But perhaps their tradition-bound worldviews couldn't allow them to see that. At one point, as we continued drinking all their beer, I think I might have suggested that they couldn't really wrap their minds around it because they hadn't gone to school in Austin (which, among these wannabes, had an effect similar to mentioning your recent trip to Jerusalem among devout Jews, Christians, or Muslims). The guests were so earnest in their desire to understand our awareness-of-awareness campaign that only one person had the balls to cast doubt (although hesitantly) on our bullshit. No one else wanted to risk seeming unaware, or worse, indifferent to awareness. When the single hesitant doubter raised a reasonable question, Brad lashed out with passion. Something to the effect of, "Don't try to impose your oppressive mindset on us! Just because you are unable to think outside the box doesn't mean the rest of us have to march in lockstep with your corporate values!" Further debate was silenced. For the rest of the night, as we drained their beer resources, we were the Buddhas of Suburbia!
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